Histamine release by compounds of simple chemical structure / W.D.M. Paton.

  • William Paton
Date:
[1957?]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Histamine release by compounds of simple chemical structure / W.D.M. Paton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    mycin, and sulphanilamide (500 /xg/ml) produced no significant effect. Cyclizine reduced the degranulation somewhat. 3. Gastrin. Smith (212, 214) has examined in detail the possibility that gastrin may induce gastric secretion, not directly, but by release of histamine in the stomach. Gastrin will mobilize histamine from perfused muscle or perfused skin, and a little from perfused stomach. Its secretagogue action is greater when in¬ jected into the coeliac artery than when given intravenously or intraport ally, but the amount of histamine released by it with coeliac injections is very small. With 48/80, it was concluded that, although intravenous doses caused gastric secretion by systemic histamine release, injections into the coeliac artery did so by an action on the gastric mucosa. /. Hydroxytryptamine and tryptamine. Feldberg and Smith (80) have made the interesting observation that tryptamine and 5-hydroxytryptamine both release histamine, as judged by tests on cat skin, cat muscle, and depletion of histamine in rat skin and muscle. The two compounds were about equiactive, and were estimated to have about Moo the potency of 48/80. Reid (181) recorded a slight erythema but nothing more at the site of an intradermal injection of tryptamine 5 X 10~3, which is compatible with it not being very active; the diamidines produce weals at 10~4, and 48/80 at 10~6. 5. Leucotaxin. The possibility that leucotaxin can release histamine has been suggested by Rocha e Silva and Dragstedt (194a) and greatly strengthened by Miles and Miles (144), from their studies on the bluing reaction in guinea-pigs. Eldridge and Paton (unpublished) found that it could, in fact, do so from cat skin and rat perfused hindquarters, and that it caused a weal in human skin, but its activity was low. 6. Lymphagogues. The description by Heidenhain (107) of the effects of inject¬ ing a decoction of crayfish muscle (one of his lymphagogues of the first order) into a dog closely parallels the effects seen with 48/80. It was found that representa¬ tive lymphagogues prepared by HeidenhaiiTs method (from lobster, rock lobster, and mussels) were, in fact, histamine liberators, and that histamine liberators, such as 48/80, propamidine, morphine, and stilbamidine, could provoke a flow of lymph. This direct histamine-releasing action of crustacean muscle may well contribute to the urticarial results of dietary indiscretion, but sensitization re¬ actions are probably also important (171). 7. Thalassine and cowhage. To the long list of substances mobilizing histamine with which plants and animals are equipped, seemingly for self-defence, are now to be added thalassine and cowhage. The former, one of the fractions extractable from sea anemone tentacles, has been shown to release histamine from cat skin, to produce the delayed depressor response in the cat under chloralose, and to raise the concentration of histamine in the plasma (113). Thalassine also causes the appearance of a slow-reacting substance in the plasma. Its activity is about the same as that of the diamidines. A study of cowhage, or “itching powder”, the name given to the trichomes which cover the pod of the tropical plant Mucuna pruriens, has indicated that its action is due not to a content of histamine but to an ability to release histamine
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